


A Marriage Of Minds

by LadyOfTheLake666



Category: The Imitation Game (2014)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Gay Relationship, Depression, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, Missing Scene, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, Queer Themes, Queerplatonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:40:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25748287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyOfTheLake666/pseuds/LadyOfTheLake666
Summary: "Inside the cage of marriage, she’d have no compulsion to be the pretty wife and he wouldn’t have to pretend to be the perfect husband- it was the closest thing to freedom in this cruel, unfeeling world.But like so many other things in life, it was not meant to be."-A canon-compliant one-shot that delves into the minds of Alan Turing and Joan Clarke, after he breaks off their engagement and she accuses him of being a monster.
Relationships: Alan Turing/Joan Clarke, Christopher Morcom/Alan Turing
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	A Marriage Of Minds

“You’re a monster”, Joan said storming off.

Every nerve in his body impelled him to run after her, down the cobblestone path.

The truth, terrible and dangerous, was threatening to smother him. He needed to tell her that he did care, that what she had proposed, surprising and unbelievable as it had seemed, was something he had wanted all along, a miraculous compromise that worked both ways, the perfect cog that turned all other gears.

He had never for once regretted hiring her, even though his colleagues scoffed at the idea of a woman working in their midst. Yet language was such a curious thing, the greatest puzzle he had never been able to solve, turning the truth of his words into a code so unbreakable, it sounded gibberish.

So why did he not run after her?

Did her truth sting him so much, because deep in his heart, he heard it fit, neat and smug, the perfect component in the clockwork machine of his mind? If he did care for her and wanted her around, why could he not go after her and let his words claim her mind, like it had once before?

Why could he not, like the day he heard the truth about Christopher in the Headmaster’s stuffy office, after all those weeks of tireless waiting, not _feel_ it?

 _Because I’m a monster_ , he reasoned, standing shock-still in the fading golden afternoon-light, as though it was the correct answer to a crossword puzzle.

_But I don’t want to be one._

*

Joan didn’t look back.

She wanted to, but she couldn’t, wouldn’t.

How dare he say such terrible, wicked things? How dare he try to control her life, in the same way her parents had tried to and failed? How dare he use her to solve his puzzle and discard her like the day’s newspaper, after reading? Bletchley Park was as much her home as his, the only place she had felt accepted, where her mind, so full of ideas and designs and conundrums, was valued and how dare he try taking that away from her, especially after proposing marriage?

What sort of a cruel, unthinking being could ever do such a thing?

He seemed to have thought that the pronouncement of his homosexuality would scare her off, disgust her, change her mind? Well, Alan Turing may have the best code-breaking brain in all of Britain, but his mind was notoriously rusty when it came to other matters. Didn’t he _get_ it, that she truly did not care if he slept with men from time to time, as long as they could work together, talk together, solve puzzles and win the war together?

Perhaps she had been wrong about him.

When he’d come over to her house, ready to convince her parents that the secret government job wasn’t all that indecorous, she had thought it was a bit too forward. When he climbed a wall and scrambled into her candle-lit bedroom from an open window in the middle of the night, with his pockets filled with pages and pages of deciphered code, she had been simultaneously surprised, scared and awed. Most men would have settled for flowers to win her heart, and it was utterly strange to meet a man, so intent upon winning her _mind_.

And he had spoken to her, sat beside her on the dusty floor and _listened_ , and even though he didn’t always meet her eyes, he had smiled when she came up with a method of solving the puzzle that he hadn’t thought of before, and there had been no professional jealousy, no hard feelings of being proven inferior, no skepticism, but (and she couldn’t dare believe it) only appreciation of her intelligence, a sense of joy at two equals, prodigy and mathematician, meeting for the first time and so, _so_ deliciously eager to learn from each other.

It was a little like falling in love, she supposed, but only because language was severely limited in alphabets and words when it came to the myriad spectrum of human emotions. _Must_ she wish to lie with a man in order to marry him? Surely it was an open secret that marriage was never about the sharing of beds. Well perhaps so, for the man who got himself a pretty wife. But what about the pretty wife, condemned to wash the curtains and fix the lamb and paint her lips and suckle kids, day after day, till her hands wrinkled and her heart grumbled, while her man went about the town, drinking and playing card games and unless she was exceptionally lucky, paying younger, prettier women a visit?

What about all the ideas, turning like oiled gears, in her mind? What about her dreams of doing some good in the world? What about her freedom, that elusive, delirious freedom to choose that men always took for granted, and _her_ intelligence? Were they meant to inevitably fall into rust, like her beauty, behind curtains and aprons, until she looked in the mirror and the woman that stared back was no longer Joan Elizabeth Clarke, but another nameless, faceless _once-pretty wife_?

And his offer of marriage, kind and thoughtful as she had supposed, had seemed a way out.

A marriage of minds, on their own terms.

She’d suspected for a while that he wasn’t like usual men, paying no attention to her powdered cheeks and with no regard for propriety, unlike his colleagues, who flirted, danced, looked on, looked at her, looked at other women and played their chivalrous games. Sometimes, when they went for lunch at the local pub, she’d caught him glancing at other men, all strangers, with the barest hint of longing on his face, and she’d felt an overbearing sadness, sadness at the life he would never get to live.

She’d wondered who Christopher was, and it had sounded so adorable to name a machine after a childhood friend and then she’d seen how attached he was to that gigantic apparatus of cogs and gears, the tenderness with which he worked, the frustration when it wouldn’t work, as though it was a person that wouldn’t listen to him, no matter how much he begged.

And she figured that whoever he loved that truly and deeply, he would never be able to dance so openly or walk hand-in-hand with that person, at least not in this country, that the closest thing to that would have to take place behind closed doors and hushed bribes, in clandestine whispers in the dark, in a trail of lies and secrets.

They were both hopelessly trapped, she had realized, both so hopelessly alone, with minds too brilliant for the world, and like a caged prisoner, she’d reached out and he’d grasped her hand, understanding, finally and for a few glorious moments, she was convinced they could have their freedom, the world on their terms.

And then, he’d thrown it all aside.

She’d meant what she said, that she had no intention of being the perfect wife. That she was more than fine with his sexual preferences, as long as it meant working together, having each other’s company, each other’s puzzling brains to pick on. And he’d said, so forcibly once upon a time, that he wouldn’t let her leave, that he _liked_ talking to her, too.

Inside the cage of marriage, she’d have no compulsion to be the pretty wife and he wouldn’t have to pretend to be the perfect husband- it was the closest thing to freedom in this cruel, unfeeling world.

But like so many other things in life, it was not meant to be.

Tearfully, she took off his ring, that makeshift quaint ring he’d strung out of wire in a moment’s notice as he’d got down to his knees to ask for her hand, and tossed it inside her coat pocket.

*

Alan was so distracted at work that day, even the others noticed. John, that insufferable Soviet spy slapped him on the back, asking him what was wrong and he’d glared at him so murderously he’d scuttled off, mumbling something about the wrong settings. Hugh, having learnt better, brought him a bowl of warm soup at his desk.

He fiddled with the same numbers again and again, going nowhere.

He had to tell her the truth.

That her life was in danger if she continued to stay and work here, that he was a liar, that John wasn’t the only spy around, that the secret of his affliction would be used against him if he didn’t, that this world of intrigue and deceit, coded with niceties, was no place for a woman like her, with a mind so dazzling that deserved to blaze fiercely and brightly and not smolder within these four small crumbling walls of a radio tower.

But they could be tailing him, tapping his phone, reading his letters, and if he told her the truth, would they come for her too?

He remembered the panic in his heart at the thought of her being interrogated, thrown into prison, caged and unable to work, and hell, he’d hang himself before it came to that.

Was the pain and betrayal in her eyes, a good trade-off?

Truth be told, he liked her more than his other colleagues, but not because she was a woman, as the others supposed, but for her kindness and understanding. He could be _himself_ around her, didn’t have to worry about knowing the right words, and when the others laughed behind his back, she had sought him out, dragged him to sunlit picnics on the dew-scented grass, taken him to lunch in the pub instead of the workroom, stayed up all night with him, deciphering codes and discussing mathematical theory.

She’d even read his papers and reached conclusions he’d never thought of. She could’ve easily been one of the greatest mathematicians of this age, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was a woman, doomed to live out her days in mediocre domesticity. 

Yet the marriage would surely stifle her, would it not? Would she be content to work, a secretary or a technical assistant, while he became a Professor at the same university that denied her the chance of being a Fellow? Wouldn’t the pain of keeping up appearances, not for their own sake, but for the world, be too much for her, when surely, there were better, more eligible men ready to take his place and fulfill her in all the other ways?

She’d asked him about Christopher once and he’d said that he was a childhood friend.

But Christopher was so much more than that.

When the boys nailed him beneath the floorboards, it was Christopher who’d come to save him. When others laughed at him for being different, Christopher had assured him that their opinions did not matter. That spot of dappled sunlight, beneath the ancient oak tree, had quickly become their favorite, leaning side by side, sharing an apple, reading the same book, or watching the birds dart around a blue-white sky, through the canopy of rain-washed leaves.

It was Christopher who understood how he fumbled with words and meanings and introduced him to a new language, of codes and ciphers and mathematics, symbols he could use to turn his thoughts into words that others would never understand, but Christopher would.

A way of talking to Christopher that transcended the limits of the very language that the adults had tried to teach him and constantly berated him for his mistakes, for his inability to understand.

A way of talking…that finally made sense.

And then after he was gone, as the world around him crumbled, as he slowly walked back to his dormitory, furiously blinking back his tears so that no one would notice, and opened the faded-orange book of codes that had been a gift, he knew that this was the only way he could ever get back to him, because grief was a labyrinth of ciphers and cryptograms that swirled and twisted and spun around him, strange symbols that he could reach out to but could never decipher.

Mathematics was his only solace.

Numbers followed laws that were logical, rational. They formed patterns that repeated themselves, that unlike humans, did not change their minds or mean something else. They were what they were, static, absolute, unchanging, and in that language perhaps he could find the stability, the safety, the comfort of Christopher’s presence once again.

In that world of codes and numbers, perhaps he would not be alone.

Riddles and mysteries were meant to be solved. The existence of a puzzle presupposed the truth of its solution. With his machine, he would not only be able to break Enigma, but find answers to the questions that still befuddled him.

If his fault lay in the fact that he couldn’t think or communicate like the people around him, then was it that he was an aberration, a machine, and yet if he could build a machine that in its own way, could think and function like a human brain, would it not imply that humans were machines too, that as Christopher had promised him, he really was not alone and had never been?

But why did Christopher never say that he’d been suffering from tuberculosis, if he’d called him a dearest friend?

Why did Christopher write that coded note, promising to meet after the six weeks of holidaying in the sun, were over?

And how could he send that message across time, to say the words he hadn’t said, to gather that boy to his arms again and tell him over and over that truth, in alphabets, in numbers, in riddles that when deciphered always translated to the same miraculous word?

That word so precious and yet so carelessly flung, that changed people and made them do things they would never dream of, that promise written across the stars, seared in the darkness of beating hearts, echoed and repeated endlessly, like a pattern, a number, an absolute truth?

That word that sounded and felt…like _love_?

_Christopher…tell me what to do, because I don’t know._

*

She wasn’t abandoning her work.

She wasn’t abandoning him.

Yet sitting in the office with the women around her all intercepting and translating messages, she felt as though a mist had clouded her brain and she kept making stupid mistakes. Sweat trickled down her cheeks, as the numbers on the page dissolved into nonsense.

Someone, maybe Helen or another clerk, asked her, smirking, “Trouble in paradise?”

The ring felt heavy in her pocket, as she scribbled down the alphabets with a pencil, dimly aware that her brain had accomplished nothing useful today.

After the day’s work, she joined Helen for a drink at the pub. With each sip, the warm amber-lit room, filled with careless laughter and jazz music, seemed to sway slightly. She kept looking over her shoulders, at every man that came through the door, hoping against hope that it might be him.

She hadn’t meant to call him a monster.

“Looking for a new man, are we?”, asked Helen.

Of course, Helen with her eye for small details, would notice the missing ring.

“Not yet”, she answered, finishing her drink, ready to order another. 

*

Alan didn’t like to admit it, but he’d always found Hugh intimidating.

With a polished appearance, a mathematical brain that could almost compete with his own, an unbounded charisma that he was well-aware he severely lacked and the ease with which that man flirted, manipulated and threatened people to get his own way, Hugh was everything Alan found perplexing in humanity. 

So with extreme nervousness, he’d gone over to Hugh’s workbench and plopped a crossword puzzle in front of him.

Hugh frowned.

“You need me to solve a newspaper puzzle?”

Alan awkwardly glanced at the blank wall behind Hugh.

“No, I need you to give it to Joan when you see her at the pub.”

Hugh raised his eyebrows.

“Are you appointing me as a messenger for your fiancée?

Alan’s face twitched.

“No, it’s not…Well, we’re not engaged anymore.”

“Touché. Was it the bad dancing that made her reconsider?”

“Please, just…just give her the paper, will you? She’ll know what to do.”

There was the hint of a plea in his voice. And then, as though aware he’d given too much of himself away, he added, “And don’t bother solving it yourself. It’s far more advanced than your skill level.”

In another life Hu,gh would have retorted with a quip, but now he only smiled, a little sadly.

“Yet after all this time, you’ve finally come to me for help.”

Alan acknowledged him with a small nod, turned on his heels and scurried out, as though he was uncomfortable to be in the same room a second longer.

*

The windchimes tinkled and Joan looked up from her third drink and noticed Hugh and the other boys enter the pub and noted with dismay that Alan wasn’t among them.

Hugh was looking in her direction, wearing his customary smirk.

Beside her Helen said, “I was hoping to keep him for myself.”

“He isn’t the marrying type”, Joan blurted.

Helen laughed, wiping her face with a paper napkin. “Wasn’t planning for the long-term, honey. Just a bit of fun. Something which I’d recommend to _you_ , for now.”

But before Joan could reply, Hugh sauntered to their table and graciously asked Helen to dance. Helen looked at Joan once with an expression that said _your turn is next_ and took his hand. With her back turned, Hugh surreptitiously placed a small piece of paper on the table, casually humming a tune. Now with Helen’s full attention on him, he led her away to the dance floor with an immaculate smile.

Joan turned over the paper. It was a crossword puzzle.

Exactly three minutes and thirty-three seconds later, she set down her half-finished drink and dashed out of the door.

It was late evening and the place was crowded with conversation and music, and not even John who sat closest to the door and was giving Peter flirting tips, noticed.

*

Alan paced along the steps and checked his watch for the sixteenth time.

He didn’t doubt that she’d solve his puzzle, but he was afraid she might not show up, after that debacle earlier in the day.

This was a different part of town, and he’d chosen it hoping for the least chances of being overheard or followed. It was dark, dingy and not too frequented. A derelict air hung about the place, lined with brick-walled houses with boarded-up windows and weakly flickering streetlamps.

Joan may not be familiar with it, but he was confident she wouldn’t get lost.

As if on cue, there were footsteps behind him. The staccato sound of heels on the dirty sidewalk.

He turned, stepping out of the alleyway to meet her.

“Alan”, she said uncertainly, her hands buried in the pockets of her dark trenchcoat. She looked pale, her eyes puffy and the faint trace of alcohol clung to her skin.

He didn’t acknowledge her at first and instead darted his eyes left and right to make sure no one was tailing them. He could never be completely sure, but he trusted statistics and precautions to minimize the chances. He then gestured her to follow him down the dark lane, which she did after a moment’s hesitation.

He took that as a good sign.

“Are you going to tell me what this is about?”, she asked, as they turned another corner.

“Eventually”, he answered, leading the way through a labyrinth of dark and silent buildings, “But I warn you, you may not like it.”

“If there was another man in your place, this would be a really bad idea.”

He stopped in his tracks.

“You’re right”, he acknowledged.

He swallowed.

Very tentatively, she spoke, “Alan, if this is about the morning, there’s something I need to say.”

He looked surprised. Their eyes met and he looked away, as if ashamed.

“There are some things I need to say too, about…about today.”

Then they both spoke at the same time.

“I’m sorry for calling you a monster.”

“I’m...I’m a s-sp-spy.”

_“What?”_

Joan stared at him, incredulous. Then slowly, she laughed.

The sound of her disbelief echoed across the empty lane. Moonlight fell upon her hair, adding a silver sheen to it. She looked as unreal as his words probably sounded to her.

“Joan, please. You don’t get it. You don’t understand the amount of danger you’re in. There are spies all around us!”

“And you’re one of them?”

Of course, she didn’t believe him.

_No one would, except perhaps Christopher._

“You must not repeat a word of what I’m about to say to anyone”, he pleaded. “Your life...your life depends on this. You have to trust me”, he added softly, fighting back his tears, “Joan”.

“Hush”. Her voice had dropped to a whisper, as she edged closer to him. “I do.”

He swallowed.

“Menzies…w-wa-wants me to play both sides. T-tell him what to leak to both the Soviets…and…and Churchill. He...he...thinks that’s the only w-way we-wecanwin. Andand if I don’t a-agree, he’ll…he’ll frame you as the spy…and you-you’ll have to go to pr-prison, Joan.”

For a few moments there was utter silence. The night air swirled around them, as if wrapping them in secrets.

*

Joan, moonlit and shuddering, took a deep breath, and when she spoke, there was a catch in her voice, “You agreed to this…to protect me?”

He didn’t reply.

Lines creased her forehead.

“But there is a Soviet spy among us, that’s not me or you?”

Nodding, he answered, “It’s Cairncross and he knows I’m…I’m a homosexual.”

“O…oh”, she said slowly, as it all started to make sense. Of course, they could not get married with the state of things. As a woman, they’d use any excuse to get rid of her. As a homosexual man, Alan risked death if he didn’t cooperate with the higher authorities. “That makes double-crossing…difficult.”

They didn’t speak for several moments.

“You deserved to know the truth”, he said finally.

“You know I’m still not going to leave Bletchley Park, right? I don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance like this and-”

“I know”, he replied, smiling sadly.

“Well…”

“Now we’ll both pretend we never had this conversation.”

The enormity of what he’d said was slowly settling on her. To keep her job and to keep both Alan and herself safe, she’d have to pretend to know nothing about this. Neither of them had a choice anymore, the world was just that cruel.

She hadn’t been wrong about Alan, she’d been wrong about the world, once again.

She wanted to edge closer to him, offer him some solace, but she stood where she was.

“Alan...I’m so sorry.” Her voice broke. “All these secrets, I can’t imagine…”

She’d never seen Alan look this sad, so forlorn, lonely, and yet his voice sounded resigned, almost happy.

“It’s alright. With Christopher around, I’m hoping we’ll win the war…sooner.”

 _Well_ , Joan thought, it was now or never.

“I’ve been meaning to ask…what really happened to Christopher?”

Alan just glanced at her.

His face bore an expression of indescribable pain.

It felt like a bolt through her heart. _Dear god, no_.

“I’m so sorry.”

“We were still in school. It happened a long time ago.”

He was trying so hard to avoid that quiver in his voice, trying so hard to appear normal, hands in his pockets, standing still, as though the truth of his best friend’s death didn’t bother him. Every day was a struggle for him, she realized, lying to everyone, lying to himself, just so he could live in this terrible society. She’d always looked upto him as a brave man, but she had underestimated his courage.

Then his voice quivered, as he softly added, “I still dr-dream about him.”

_Of course, you do._

Alan had probably never admitted this to anyone else.

Suddenly Alan seemed to him like a thick leather-bound book, of which she’d just seen the first few pages, while the rest of him was hidden, unreadable, undecipherable, closed shut to the world. Yet his face, so flushed with pain and sadness and faint moonlight, was so naked, his hurt so raw, it seared her heart and yet she was so helpless.

Not every code could be cracked. Some pains could never be translated.

Yet she wouldn’t be Joan Elizabeth Clarke, mathematician and code-breaker if she ever gave up the chance to try.

“I don’t know if it’s in my place to say this…I know I can’t ever replace him and I won’t ever try to. But I want you to know…you don’t have to do this alone. You aren’t alone.”

She meant it. Through the tears trailing down her pale, moonlit cheeks, she meant every word of it.

He smiled at her and something like love and admiration shone on his face.

“I know”, he replied, sincerely.

There was so much he didn’t say and that reminded her of all that they had in common.

They were so many ways two people could be there for each other.

While bonds of love and passion, blazed and ebbed, moved men to create machines, stirred women to give up their dreams, gifted them with everlasting inspiration and promise, bonds of friendship weren’t as fiery, creeping upon two people quietly like a forest brook, and it cared not for the longing of bodies, but of minds, for a hand to hold in the dark. It was the opposite of loneliness, it was hope. It did not change life overnight the way love did, but it made it bearable, livable.

 _I know_ , he had said, even though he was saying so much more in those two words. Yes, they couldn’t marry and yes, they’d still have to wear a mask for the world, but they could still have a lifetime of what they both wanted.

They could still be there for each other.

They were trapped in a maze and they’d chosen separate paths, but every so often, their roads would intersect, blend and then diverge, once again.

And she could almost see it, the other life unfurling before them like a promise. Perhaps not the candlelit conversations she’d imagined but a life spent in exchanging ideas and puzzles in letters, coffeeshop visits, some strolls in the park and a few picnics in the sun, little reunions to look forward to, as the years wore on and memories faded.

And she supposed they would meet other people, go on to live very different lives, but that didn’t change their friendship, relationship, whatever it was they shared, one bit.

Nothing could change that.

*

And no one knew that better than Alan, who’d lost Christopher but had found a way to give life meaning, and he knew she’d find it too.

“You have a whole life ahead of you, Joan. You deserve the world.”

And she looked at him, as though he was something glorious, and it did feel glorious to be _seen_ , to be understood, to be acknowledged. So he let her hug him, and he wrapped his arms around her coat as he pressed a soft, quick kiss on her forehead and then let go, sad and yet strangely at peace.

“So do you”, she replied tearfully, letting go.

They walked silently, side by side, all the way to the main road, trailed only by the moonlight and the cold night wind. He called a cab for Joan, and they waved at each other, till the car lights slowly faded out, and then he took a different path home.

And as he walked down the dark cobblestone street, he thought of the ways Christopher could be made to run faster, of the lies he’d have to tell Menzies, of what new breakthrough Joan would come up with next, and of the two dark-haired boys beneath an oak tree, so strong and confident in their love, their careless laughter still bristling in the golden summer wind.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello.
> 
> I saw The Imitation Game a week ago and cried so much. Plus, I was really fascinated by Joan Clarke's character and the queerplatonic undertones in her relationship with Alan. I feel wholesome platonic relationships/friendships are so rarely depicted in popular culture or paid attention to, and this film gave me all the feels, so here I am with a fic.
> 
> It would mean the world to me if you let me know how you liked reading this. And this seems like a pretty lonely fandom so if you want to talk about the movie or drool over Benedict Cumberbatch, drop a message on my tumblr @ladyofthelake666.


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